18 Jul How Big Is the Glastonbury Festival?
Every year since 1970, Glastonbury’s festival spirit comes upon us. The festival is many things to different people—talk of the music, camping experiences, parties, comedy and movie scoops, etc.
Whether you’ve been attending the festival since you could walk or are expecting to make your debut soon, we can all agree that the festival doesn’t seem to amaze. But, how big is Glastonbury Festival? Let’s put it in context.
Stages
Betway Online Casino recently investigated one of Glastonbury’s performance spaces, Croissant Neuf, managed by Sally Howell. According to her, planning for the five-day showdown is an all-year-round thing signalling how much planning goes into the festival’s production.
Glastonbury Festival has seen hundreds of stages since its founding making it one of the biggest festivals worldwide. Some stages have evolved by changing names or moving locations to meet the festival attendees’ volatile needs.
Reports indicate that this year’s Glastonbury Festival featured seven main stages and more than 70 performance spaces. The Pyramid is the festival’s iconic main stage which played host to some of its topmost talents, from Paul McCartney to Kendrick Lamar this year. The festival’s patrons attest that each stage provides a satisfying experience and can be an independent mini-festival.
Land Area
Thinking about how a festival can host a hundred stages while hosting 210,000 people? Unsurprisingly, Glastonbury’s site is an entire city that could pass as the 27th largest in the United Kingdom. It dwarfs nearby Southwest England towns and cities. Bournemouth, Bristol, and Plymouth are the only cities with more people than Glastonbury.
Worthy Farm, the host site for the Glastonbury festival, is owned by Michael Eavis, who doubles as the Glastonbury festival’s co-creator. The Worthy Farm site spans over nine hundred acres.
Attendance
Glastonbury has had its highs and lows. For instance, the pandemic foiled the festival’s planned 50th anniversary, forcing it to suspend all activities for two years. The festival opened its gates to over two hundred thousand attendees after its break. Each year whenever the festival happens, the attendance numbers hover around the two hundred thousand column.
But the festival’s 1994 edition, which saw the Levelers in prime action on the Pyramid stage, was an exception and the most attended Glastonbury ever. An estimated three hundred thousand people stormed Lemon heads, the deceased Lucky Dube, among several other talents.
Spend And Revenue
According to a recent survey by Somerset County Council, the festival generates over thirty million pounds in tourism. Each year, the festival’s costs run up to about thirty to 40 million pounds, including expenses on charitable donations.
The festival’s organisers maintain that they need to sell out before they can break even, and a huge part of the business’s profitability relies on how they can manage and control costs in the future. Drawing lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on Glastonbury, the festival’s organisers decided to set aside a ten million pound contingency cash reserve.
Generally, there is no doubt that Glastonbury is one of the biggest festivals in the world, considering its stellar lineup, performance setup, land mass, etc. The festival’s organisers have said repeatedly that they do not take this success for granted and hoped to do more for its attendees.
